I recently had a friend and riding companion commit suicide. I want to do him justice in print, but I'm too close to this to judge if it's worth, at the very least, posting to my bike blog. (Shameless plug link to a shameless plug:
http://forums.sohc4.net/index.php?topic=76111.0 I try not to put down anything sub-standard, so if anyone likes to read. (not on a forum!) check this out and let me know what you think. I put it to you gents to decide.
I heard someone say that one way or another, the big personalities in our lives tend not to stick around too long. What a damned cruel thing. What's worse, I think he's right. Good friends with great personalities have come and gone my whole life, and when they go it always sucks. The worst of all these happened recently, I lost a riding partner and very close friend. More a friend than a riding partner, really, but we did spend a good amount of time leaning through the hills of Virginia. 'Raptorman' as I called him (when he wasn't in earshot) suffered from depression and lived his life in fits and spurts as a result. But, when he was on, when he was living, boy, was he living. When he was down he was out, completely. The last time he was down, he was so far out he couldn't climb back out. Raptor committed suicide, and I guess there wasn't anything I could do about it. At least, I try to believe that.
Imagine this: A medium build, full of life, sitting atop a 60s Beemer airhead and grinning like he knows the devil's last name. Raptor's got a black leather jacket and a helmet and goggles you think might have been stolen off a dead Luftwaffe soldier, if you didn't know better... Then, there were the enormous WWII rucksacks slung over as saddlebags. Where did he get all that crazy, antiquated, mechanical crap he kept? If anyone was hiding a time machine, it would have been him, raptorman was that kind of crazy, smart and wild, and when he saw you coming he'd bellow your name in a voice like a lumberjack soaked in bear piss. A through and through BMW man, he always told me it was time to graduate off the Honda to a Beemer. I could never quite give in, and after he took the '78 cb550 out for a ride he finally figured out why. He did eventually have me ride along to pick up a 550 a bit later down the road... but since I knew the him, he never gave up a single Beemer, but now I own one. I don't think that bike will ever really be mine, and I'd give it back in a heartbeat. I tried to prove I'm worth it by taking it about 3,500 miles like we had talked about doing in better days.
In 'better days' Raptor would always offer a beer, and almost always an India Pale Ale. I'm still not sure if he started drinking it because it was tasty or because it was higher in alcohol than most other beer, but it's all he ever had. It took about a year to adjust to the taste and even longer to figure out why I hobbled so bad every time I left his place. Have another beer, oh, didn't you know? It's 7.5 %... His personality was magnetic and open. He told me once, “I was looking for a party on Hill street last night, but I wound up at the wrong house. There was a party there, so I stayed a couple of hours anyway, eventually I found the right house.” That was his life, that, and a few interesting ways to keep busy. His hobbies were mixed, and always fun to be around. I helped him piece together motorcycles, cure bacon, brew beer, smoke pork ribs, repair his '60s Volvo, chop wood and most often, drink beer. He was a man well after his time. Once in a while, we even got out on the motorcycles. We spent some great times together, and I sat with him through some pretty rough bouts when the depression hit hard, but I always thought he'd pull though, he always had and always would. He was strong enough to keep going and I believed that without doubt, until he wasn't.
When he moved to California to be closer to his family, and get his head right, I thought it was a good decision. Apparently it wasn't, or maybe it was... that's suicide. When it comes right down to it, I know I only had a limited impact on his decisions, but suicide always leaves you feeling like you could have done more, wishing you had, and wondering... What's done is done and that's what I live with, that and the holes left where my friend used to fit. The holes that I don't really want to fill, even though, sometimes, I try with India Pale Ale, or a cut of fatty pork, or a ride in the hills. Usually thought, it's the IPA. Those holes that are full of memories and a name, a face and a lot of sorrow. I want to kick down the door of his old house and hear him yell my name in that ox piss voice, then have him ask what the hell I want. I want him up the street complaining about his cat. I just want him back in this world, even for just one more beer. That's suicide.
